Only Ghosts
by poetryandstones
Summary: Emily, closeted and directionless, is distraught when she finds out about a new development in Rosewood. But when she meets Paige she discovers that she needs to learn to embrace change, and herself, if she ever hopes to move on with her life. AU Paily.


_So everyone's familiar with how Emily helped Paige come to terms with her sexuality, but what if it was the other way around? This story is mostly AU with a few canon consistencies, but you'll have to read on to find out what they are... _

_Maybe leave me a review if you enjoy this chapter? Thanks!_

* * *

**Only Ghosts**

_Not conscious__  
__that you have been seeking__  
__suddenly__  
__you come upon it_

_- (RS Thomas)_

**1**

Pam Fields was furious.

Emily could tell by the way the groceries were slammed down onto the kitchen counter, the apples jumping up excitably from their position balanced inexpertly on top of the eggs before toppling down onto the surface of the counter and bouncing briefly, rolling enthusiastically to the edge of the counter before tumbling to land at Emily's feet.

Emily bent down and picked them up, rubbing at their blemishes briefly with the sleeve of her sweater. 'Everything OK Mom?' she inquired as she set them back on the counter.

Her mother pressed a hand dramatically against her forehead between her eyebrows as if she was developing a migraine. 'I just don't know what's wrong with people,' she said, turning to look at Emily in a vaguely accusatory manner, as if the sentence could be equally applied to her.

'What people?' Emily asked, taking a few steps closer to begin extracting the groceries from the bag.

'Just ... people,' she gesticulated erratically towards nothing in particular, 'everyone,' she concluded.

'What's happened exactly Mum?' Emily asked gently, opening the fridge to put away the perishables she had piled into her arms.

'Those _hippies _in the woods,' her Mum said angrily.

Emily scrunched up her face slightly in confusion. _Hippies in the woods? Really? _'Mum, don't take this the wrong way but ... did you breathe in any suspicious fumes in the car today?'

'Don't get smart with me Emily,' Pam warned, snapping round to look at her, and Emily bit her lip and shut the fridge door quietly, 'You _know_ your Father and I have viewings for the house all week,' Pam continued, 'if anything's going to drive the value down it's a bunch of unwashed _tree-huggers_ camping right outside the front door.'

Emily frowned, trying to ignore the pang of sorrow she felt at her mother's mention of their imminent relocation. 'You're going to have to help me out here Mom, I seriously have no idea what you're talking about,' she admitted.

'Have you even left the house today Emily?' Pam asked irritably, 'because if you had you'd have seen them all there with their _tents_ and their _signs_.' She sighed heavily as if the whole thing burdened her terribly. 'They're protesting the building of those condos in that scrubby bit of woodland by the Marwyn Trail.'

Emily's body tensed. 'Condos?' she repeated. 'What condos? Why haven't I heard anything about this?'

'If you took any interest in local affairs, Emily, you'd have seen the notices in the paper,' Pam reminded her.

Emily scowled. 'But Mom ... that's where,' she felt her throat begin to tighten, 'I mean ... Ali's shrine ...'

'Oh, Emily,' Pam sighed, her tone softening slightly, 'I'm sorry honey, I really am,' she paused, pursing her lips together as if unsure whether to say what she wanted to say, and after a moment just continuing anyway, 'but when was the last time you even visited that?'

Emily dropped her gaze to the floor, her eyes prickling slightly, aware that her mother was right. It was probably a racoon den by now.

Her mother appeared to allow her a few moments of contemplative silence before speaking again. 'Now will you go any tidy that pig sty you call a bedroom please?' she asked, scrunching up the now empty grocery bag noisily and balling it tightly in her fist. 'The estate agent's arriving in thirty minutes and we're going to need all the help we can get.'

* * *

She stood up from laying fresh flowers at the base of the hollow tree and rejoined the line of her three best friends who had gathered at her panicked group-text half an hour earlier. She could hear the distant bustle coming from the protest camp, as well as some sort of rustling coming from somewhere close by, but when she looked up she saw nothing but the canopy of the trees.

When Alison had disappeared teams of searchers armed with shovels and flashlights and whistles had combed through every last inch of the woodland, churning up the earth and tramping through the brambly undergrowth, calling out to each other through the trees, cordoning off more sections of the wood with yellow police tape. When Ali had been found, dead, back at her house of all places, the wood looked just as traumatised as Emily had felt, scrambled and disorientated, unfairly arraigned as the entomber of the body. Emily found herself coming to the woods more and more often – they offered her a quiet emptiness that she couldn't find at home, not with the team of police detectives stationed next door. She had discovered the old hollow tree on one of her visits, and had found it frightening at first; it was broken-backed and expressionistic – dead, with a cavernous opening splitting its trunk near the base. But there was something comforting about it that Emily could never quite put into words. Something about the void, something about death, something about the new life that encircled it – green saplings springing from around its gnarled roots – that gave her a sense of strength when nothing else would. When she took a framed photo of Alison from her house and placed it into the shadowy cradle of the hollow, she had felt as if she'd laid a ghost to rest. Gradually, her and her friends had all brought keepsakes and mementos of Alison to the tree.

'I just wish we could do something,' Emily muttered, scuffing at the soft earth with the toe of her shoe.

'Like join a protest?' Aria suggested softly.

'Well ... no,' Emily conceded, 'but –'

'Short of tie-dying your underwear and using a bucket for a toilet, I don't expect there's much you can do Em,' Hanna told her, glancing towards the tents.

'Not to stereotype or anything, huh Han?' Spencer asked dryly.

'Hey, I used to have to stay at my Uncle's 'artist commune' in Connecticut _every summer. _Communal living is messy. I've seen things that I had to repress,' she seemed to visibly shudder.

Spencer rolled her eyes. 'Oh please.'

Aria placed a gentle hand on Emily's shoulder. 'I wish we could leave her here too Em, but seeing as we can't ... I'd like to move her somewhere where she won't get, y'know ... bull-dozed.'

Emily sighed, feeling helpless. 'Yeah ... you're right.'

'We'll pick a real nice place,' Hanna promised, taking Emily's hand in her hers and squeezing lightly.

Emily looked up sharply as she heard the rustling again, certain it was coming from almost directly above her.

Her friends remained seemingly oblivious to the noise, but they were growing a little restless, beginning to offer reasons for needing to leave.

'You guys go ahead,' Emily told them. 'I'm just going to ... stay a little longer.'

'Don't stay out late Em,' Aria warned her as they began to move away.

'Promise,' Emily assured her with a small smile.

Her friends had disappeared entirely from view when she heard the rustling again, and she once again looked up, before looking left and right urgently. 'Alright who's there?' she asked firmly.

More rustling was her only answer.

'Just come out OK?' she reasoned. 'Unless you're a racoon,' she realised suddenly, 'in which case just ... stay in because, you know ... rabies,' she trailed off uncertainly.

'Anyone whose goal is 'something higher' must expect someday to suffer vertigo.'

Emily jumped at the voice, then whipped round in a circle on the spot before looking up into the trees above her to see some of the branches moving more than the others surrounding them.

The voice continued, 'What is vertigo? Fear of falling? No, Vertigo is something other than fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.'

Emily was beginning to half-imagine that the voice was coming from within herself until she heard something drop lightly onto the ground behind her and she turned to see a girl stood a few paces away, studying closely a page of the open book in her hand. 'Would you agree with that?' the girl asked, looking up and directly at Emily.

'What?' Emily asked, too stunned at the girl's sudden appearance to properly process what was being asked of her.

'I think I would,' the girl mused, looking briefly back down at the page. 'It's asking you to question what it is you're afraid of.'

'It ... um, it is?' Emily asked, slowly taking in the appearance of the girl - her soft features, her reddish-brown hair pulled back into a messy ponytail, her sculpted arms and slim hips and torn jeans.

'And what are you afraid of Emily?' the girl asked, the beginning of a playful smirk appearing on her lips.

Emily tensed up. 'How ... how do you know my name?' she asked.

The girl shrugged, shutting the book and letting her arm drop to her side. 'Female intuition?' she suggested, rolling her eyes at the way Emily folded her arms in an unimpressed manner. 'OK, I heard you and your friends talking,' the girl admitted.

'Oh.' Emily squinted up into the trees again. 'Where did you even come from?' she asked.

'The camp,' the girl told her, gesturing arbitrarily behind her, 'and I want you to know that, despite appearances, I don't _actually_ tie-dye my underwear.'

Emily felt her cheeks flush with heat before shutting her eyes briefly and shaking her head. '_Hanna_,' she admonished under her breath.

'I'm Paige by the way,' the girl said, taking the few steps closer to Emily it required to offer out her hand.

'Emily,' Emily answered, taking the hand and having hers roughly shaken before she remembered Paige already knew her name.

'Nice to meet you,' Paige said, withdrawing her hand and tucking some of her stray hair behind her ear.

Emily's gaze dropped to the book in Paige's other hand. 'What are you reading?' she asked.

'The Unbearable Lightness of Being,' Paige told her, holding it up for Emily to see the front cover. 'You can borrow it when I'm finished if you want.'

Emily smiled at the bizarre offer. 'Um ... sure,' she found herself agreeing. 'Thanks.'

She watched as Paige's gaze drifted past her to the flowers she'd laid at the hollow tree. 'I love that tree,' she said, and Emily turned to glance back at it before facing Paige again.

'Yeah, me too,' she revealed.

'It's so, like, _dramatic_ looking. I found it a few days ago.' She paused briefly. 'I um ... found the stuff inside it as well,' she admitted, looking slightly awkward about broaching the subject.

Emily swallowed, feeling suddenly self-conscious.

'Some of it was ... kinda dirty,' Paige continued. 'I polished up the photo a bit.'

'You did?' Emily asked, a strange feeling of warmth spreading up from the pit of her stomach.

Paige nodded. 'The girl in the photo ... she was um ... she was very beautiful.'

Emily smiled, 'she was.'

Paige smiled back with a shyness that she hadn't yet displayed and Emily felt the warm feeling intensify somehow. 'I decided I really wanted to meet whoever had left it. I've been hanging around close-by ever since on the off-chance they'd show up.'

Emily smiled again. 'Really?'

Paige grinned. 'Really.'

'Why?' Emily couldn't stop herself from asking.

Paige shrugged. 'I figured that someone that would do something like that would be worth meeting.'

Emily looked down at her feet bashfully, 'and ... now you've met me, do I meet your expectations?' she asked timidly, looking back up.

'I'd say that you rather spectacularly exceed them,' Paige told her confidently, and Emily felt her cheeks burning once again, looking back down at the ground as she tried to control the spread of her smile.

Something loud and incoherent was bellowed through the trees from the camp and both girls jumped. Paige gazed off into the direction of the noise before turning and moving towards the base of one of the trees surrounding them. She reached up and gripped onto the lowest-hanging bough, scrambling her feet up the tree trunk and managing to hook her elbows around the bough enough to haul herself up.

'Don't be a stranger Em,' the girl said as she stood, reaching for the next branch up, 'we're on the same side, remember,' she told her with a smile, and Emily watched as she climbed out of sight.

..


End file.
